


Why Must I Chase the Cat?

by thequidditchpitch_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Heterosexual Sex, Romance, Second War with Voldemort, The Quidditch Pitch: Erotic Couplings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2018-10-27 16:33:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10812753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequidditchpitch_archivist/pseuds/thequidditchpitch_archivist
Summary: Azkaban has seriously messed with Sirius' metabolism.  Unfortunately,  someone just stole the warmest spot in the house.  Damned felines.





	Why Must I Chase the Cat?

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** **Written for the February 2010 Daily Deviant prompt of thalpotentiginy**

  
Author's notes:

Gah, if only these two were closer in age, I'd write them all the time. I love them together. 

* * *

The cold seeped into his bones, inescapable. It hadn't always been like that. He seemed to recall that as a young man, he was always opening windows and running outside without a jumper, much to his mother's annoyance.

_His mother,_ he thought, and sighed. If he didn't know better, he'd have bet it was her bloody ghost chilling the place. In the park across the square, people were wearing as little as possible, their bodies covered in the sheen of more heat and humidity than London had seen in several decades. But the house was as cold as a mausoleum, the product of powerful cooling charms and the cold hearts of six generations of inbred pureblood fanatics.

He could blame it on his incarceration, too. His body, starved and abused as it had been, just never could seem to get warm anymore. 'They' said that alcohol lowered the body even when it felt like it was heating it up, but Sirius wasn't about to give up the one thing that was preventing him from going mad, alone in the house he hated.

He wasn't even allowed into the back garden where he might be spotted from above, and he looked longingly through the conservatory window at the wilted flowers and the air that seemed to shimmer in the blazing sun. On top of the wall next door, a Siamese cat lay in the sunlight, draped improbably over the narrow bricks, mocking him with the apparent smile on its face. He bloody well hated cats, especially when they smirked.

Sometimes, when he was in a particularly foul mood, he would melt down into Padfoot, barking and growling at the nasty thing until it went away, at least for a little while. It always came back, though. Stupid smug feline.

It helped when there were others in the house. Not just the body heat, but the chance to get out of his head for a moment, and he found himself clinging to the company of those that he might otherwise have found profoundly irritating. Like Molly, who had a tendency to be an old busybody, but who was always good for a bit of gossip. Or Dung, who, quite frankly, stank, but was a hell of a lot of fun to drink with. Or Mc--no, _Minerva,_ who was all right, apart from the stick up her arse, and who sometimes stopped looking at him with disapproval long enough to look at him with sympathy.

Not today, though. Today, when faced with the realization that she was stuck in a cursed house for at least an hour while Dumbledore wrapped up an emergency meeting with Snivellus, she looked over at him with her nose wrinkled and her lips pursed, refusing his offer of three-hour-old coffee.

Mumbling something about needing to look up something in the study, she left him alone in the empty kitchen, wondering if the whiskey on his breath had been that obvious. Or perhaps it was a feline thing. Unpredictable creatures. Fuck them. Buckbeak was better company. Or, at least he was when he wasn't moulting, as he was today.

Which meant that unless he wanted to have a conversation with his mother's portrait, he was on his own. He decided to take his whiskey-in-a-teacup-with-a-splash-of-cof

fee and the three-day-old Prophet (with his grizzled mug on the cover, naturally) to his father's private study, up on the top floor, the warmest room in the house. But alas, he was to discover that someone beat him to it.   
  
His former head of house was curled up on the sofa, asleep. Or curled up on half a sofa, rather, the half that was bathed in sunlight from the open window. His favorite half of the sofa. The very half of the sofa he himself had been looking forward to curling up in a ball on. Damn her. Never before had her resemblance to her feline form been so obvious to him. But then again, he'd never, ever imagined that he'd walk into a room and catch her napping, and especially not in a room in his house. And yet there she was, two bare feet peeking out from underneath the old-fashioned long skirts of her tartan robes. And more than that, she was smiling in her sleep, _smirking,_ even, though he'd never have thought her capable of it. Just like that damned Siamese next door. Hogging up the only patch of sunlight in the room.   
  
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Padfoot whispered that it would be jolly good fun to chase her off the sofa, out of their favorite room, and possibly even out of the house. But Sirius himself remembered her off hand remark about her Department of Mysteries duties the night before, and he took pity on her. Instead, he sat down on his father's favorite leather chair, opening up his paper as quietly as possible and reading the front page headlines. They thought he was in Provence this week. If only it were true.   
  
For a good half an hour, he absorbed himself with the sports pages, the crossword, and the comics, knowing that any attempt to read the 'news' articles about Harry and Dumbledore and how everything was just fine, thank you very much (if only Dumbledore would shut his wrinkled gob) would just irritate him. He sipped at his drink from time to time, taking a moment to savour the feeling of warmth that curled through his stomach as the alcohol made its way through his bloodstream. Occasionally, he would glance over at the other occupant of the room, and once he caught her stretching her toes and then moving her feet more openly into the sunbeam. Her smile widened, and he wouldn't have been the least surprised if the old bag had let out a purr of contentment. Though, come to think of it, she wasn't all that old, not really, nowhere near as old as she'd seemed when he was a boy and she was his terrifyingly stern head of house. Old enough to be his mother, certainly, but far less deserving of the title of 'old bag,' especially when you'd seen her with a wand in her hand and a Death Eater in her sights. He'd only had the privilege once or twice, but he remembered thinking that she could have put the goddess she'd been named for to shame. _Handsome,_ that's what Moody called her, and Sirius reckoned it was an understatement, if anything.   
  
But here, vulnerable in sleep, without the mantle of duty on her shoulders, he felt a sort of kinship with her. Locked in a cold castle for the better part of a year, restricted by her position of authority and the rigid upbringing he's heard tell of (her father had been a military man, he'd heard, a hero in the Grindelwald War, but a cold, rigid man--some even used the word heartless) and yet, curled up in sleep and permitting herself the pleasure of a warm sunbeam on bare toes, she seemed almost human. A woman, possibly even a girl at one point. One who'd had a husband, a daughter, and lost them both to Death Eaters. He'd never met the daughter, she'd been a few years above him and hadn't returned after his fourth year, but surely the existence of offspring indicated that she was capable of letting her hair down, at least once. Not that it had made any difference with his mother, come to think of it.   
  
He found, as he was sitting there envying her her patch of sunlight and trying unsuccessfully to focus on the paper, that he couldn't keep his eyes off her toes for long. Perhaps it was because he'd never imagine that he'd get a glimpse of her bare feet. Perhaps he had a heretofore unknown foot fetish.   
  
And as he pondered that possibility, his former head of House stretched, causing the foot in question to venture even further out from the skirts that partially covered it, and as the sunbeam hit her elegantly curved ankle, Minerva sighed.  
  
It was such a girlish, sensual sound, so far removed from the resigned sighs he'd heard over the years as she'd been presented with his countless indiscretions that he had to look back up at her face and make sure she hadn't been replaced by someone else entirely. But no, it was her, and he noticed that with the stern expression she normally wore gone her face was softened, vulnerable, possibly even pretty.  
  
Sirius shook his head. What had gotten into him? He wasn't so hard up that even a woman old enough to be his mother looked good, was he?  
  
Perhaps he was. His idyllic months in Greece seemed like ages ago.   
  
And at the moment, she didn't look old enough to be his mother. Or perhaps that had more to do with the face that taunted him in the mirror each morning. He looked old enough to be his father these days, didn't he?  
  
As he frowned over that thought, she moved again, pushing the other foot out in the open. She whimpered in her sleep, and the sound was doing the strangest things to his cock.   
  
He was getting some very, very bad ideas.  
  
And he'd never been all that good resisting bad ideas, had he?   
  
What harm would it do to sit down and share a sofa with one of his guests? And if his hand just happened to land on her ankle rather than the cushion next to him, it could always be explained as an accident, right? Perfectly innocent. She'd probably not even notice.  
  
He hadn't expected her to moan.   
  
Whatever was happening in her dream must have been nice, or maybe it was the heat of his hand on her bare skin, but his cock seemed to think that this was a sign that he was to do all manner of fun things to her while she seemed so amenable.  
  
He ignored most of the ideas, but permitted himself the pleasure of sliding his hand up slightly until his fingers were half-circling her ankle. She moaned again, but then she opened her eyes, narrow, at first as she tried to focus on him, and then wider as she recognized him.  
  
"Nice catnap?" he asked, leaving his hand where it was for the moment.   
  
She blinked, looking around, her eyes finally settling on his hand and her ankle. She frowned, blinking again.   
  
"Just sharing the sunbeam," he said, letting his thumb move ever-so-slightly over her skin. "You were hogging it all up."  
  
"I beg your pardon?" she said, and began to sit up, which wouldn't do at all. Sirius gave her the smile that used to have Hufflepuffs dropping their knickers by the dozen. Not that it had ever really worked with the woman beside him.   
  
"This is the warmest spot in the house," he said, holding tight to her angle as she struggled to sit up. "Leave it to a feline to commandeer it."  
  
"And leave it to a canine to completely ignore all sense of personal space and propriety," she said, trying to pull her ankle away.  
  
"You moaned," he said.   
  
"I was sleeping," she retorted.  
  
"Must have been a good dream." He leaned down, letting his grin widen. "Was I in it?"  
  
"Absolutely not," she said stiffly, but she'd stopped trying to pull at her ankle.  
  
"Too bad," he said, and began rubbing with his thumb a little more boldly. "Could have been fun. You, me, the little sunbeam..."  
  
"Mr. Black," she began.  
  
"Sirius," he said. "I'm not you student any more, am I? I sort of thought we were becoming friends."  
  
"Perhaps," she said, pursing her lips. "But I don't make it a habit to let even my friends take liberties with my ankle."  
  
"Oooh, I love it when you talk like a Victorian spinster," he said. "Trapped in that frigid castle all year, afraid that if you bend just the tiniest bit, they'll walk all over you. But I always knew you had a bit of the devil in you." He reached out to gesture toward her mouth. "Right there, that's where your lip would tremble when you were trying hard not to laugh at me."  
  
She bit down on the lip in question. "I most certainly was not."  
  
"Liar." He let his other fingers move over the top of her ankle, inching their way up her leg.   
  
"Whelp."  
  
"Kitten."  
  
"Are you actually trying to seduce me, Mr. Black?"  
  
"Come on, Minerva, would it kill you to let your hair down?"  
  
"Preposterous. I'm old enough to be your grandmother."  
  
"Mother, more like. And I have more gray hair and wrinkles than you do."  
  
She snorted, but when he began to caress her calf in earnest, she didn't stop him. Her skin was softer than he'd ever possibly imagined. Not that he'd imagined all that much, though there were one or two horrifying teenage dreams that had involved her wearing leather and carrying a whip.  
  
'Do you ever feel, living in that place, that you'll never get warm again? The cold settles into your bones, and it doesn't matter if there is a blazing fire, you just can't get warm under your skin."  
  
"It's because you've been malnourished," she said, and looked away, frowning.   
  
"Were you?" he asked.   
  
"War rations." As soon as she said it, she looked as though she wished she'd kept her mouth shut.   
  
"There really is nothing like sun on your skin, is there?" he said, and began lifting her skirt. She closed her eyes as the warmth hit her knees. She had the legs of a woman who'd spent the last few decades climbing twenty flights of stars a day and her toes were curling into the cushions of the sofa.  
  
He began letting his thumbs press gently into the muscles of her legs, and he swore he could see her eyeballs rolling back under her eyelids. "Lie back," he said. "Let me take care of you."  
  
"Can't even take care of yourself," she muttered, but somehow (and he wasn't sure if it was a compliment to him or just that she really, really liked sunlight) she ended up complying, settling back against the cushions and even loosening her hair a bit.  
  
"Take it down," he whispered. She ignored him, but when he dug his thumbs into the arches of her feet (after letting out the most delicious moan) she looked straight at him as she unbound her hair in one practiced movement.   
  
"Fuck," he muttered, as a cloud of rich, dark, silver-streaked hair tumbled down and spread over the red leather cushion.  
  
"Did I tell you to stop?" she said, and raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
Sirius grinned, continuing to massage her arches as he used his free hand to slide her skirts further up her thighs. The fine dark hair scattered over the top of her thighs glinted in the sunlight, contrasting with her pale skin, which was illuminated to an almost blinding white.   
  
"Beautiful," he said, and bent low, risking a kiss on the inside of her thigh. As he looked up over her body at her, she frowned a bit, reaching out to stroke the top of his head.   
  
"You were always such a beautiful boy," she said softly.   
  
"I haven't been a boy in a long time."  
  
"And I haven't been a girl in far longer."  
  
For a moment, he held her gaze, and for some reason, he felt like he could easily have burst into tears. Then she smiled down at him, and he moved up her body, stopping when he was facing her. She reached up to tuck his hair behind his ear, and he bent low to brush his lips over hers. He had the unexpected pleasure of feeling her tremble beneath him, and something about that tiny sign of vulnerability set something completely mad loose within him, and he was fumbling with her clothes, kissing every bit of soft, fragrant flesh he uncovered. Minerva, too was tearing at his clothes, and when the sunbeam hit his bare back and buttocks, his cock was already encased in warm, wet heat. His hand were filled with surprisingly lush curves, and as she flipped them over and moved above him, her thick, dark hair flowed down her back and over breasts far more spectacular than his fifteen year-old self might have dreamed up when they discussed which (if any) of their teachers they'd shag. Her head was thrown back, and she had a look of utter abandon on her face, and Sirius thought it might well have been the sexiest thing he'd ever seen in his life. She was fucking beautiful.   
  
Later, lying beside her on the floor, feeling the sun on his bare skin as her warm hands drifted languidly over his body, he wondered if he'd ever felt as relaxed and content in his life. And he was completely sober. He grinned as he looked down at the woman who'd fallen asleep in the crook of his arm and was clearly trying to hog as much of the sunbeam as possible. Well, she could have it. He'd take a warm body over a sunbeam any day of the week. Besides, she was smiling in her sleep.   
  
Smug feline.   
He supposed he could learn to like them.


End file.
